Teacher Time/Small Groups

While all the students are moving about the room working hard during Daily 5; I will call them to our small group table to teach our skills. I have four teams leveled by ability and they are Red, Yellow, Green, and Blue. I am blessed to have another certified teacher who comes in every day from 8:00 - 8:40. She works with my Red group the whole time Daily 5 is going on.

I teach the same lesson twice on Monday and Tuesday, then a different lesson on Wednesday and Thursday. My schedule is Monday and Thursday is Yellow and Tuesday and Wednesday is Green and Blue. Sometimes I switch it up depending on how fast a group gets through the lesson.

The supplies I have for small groups are pencils, colored pencils, dry erase markers, and dry erase boards. I also have a note pad I got for $1 at target that has Mon-Sun listed. I use this pad to write down who I met with and which students struggled and which students mastered the skill.



Small Group Supplies



Class Meeting

After the students spend their time doing the Daily 5 rotations I ring my bell and all of my students come and sit on the green rug facing our easel. During this time we give thumbs up or thumbs down if they worked hard during Daily 5. The children love to personally check themselves.

The students sit facing the "We can..." easel. The easel has listed all of our standards that we have met so far this year for Language and Reading. I have a chart for Language and another chart for Reading and I rotate every other week between the skills. We start on Monday and review the first 2 or 3 standards and continue until the list is reviewed.

The last thing we do at our meeting is review our spelling words, vocabulary words, and our state standards for the week.

Listen to Reading

The very last piece of Daily 5 is Listen to Reading.  Next year I may put AR books for them to listen to but this year I am having them listen to their reading story once a week. They go in pairs to listen.

The sign you see has written on it 'listen for contractions'. This week in grammar we discussed contractions so on the sign I write our grammar skill and they listen for it and when we meet together on the rug they tell me the ones they remember.

Word Work

Word Work is where the book and I differ quite a bit. The Daily 5 book wants the students to use play dough, wikki sticks, and sand to write their spelling words and vocabulary words. I think those ideas are wonderful but for me who needs some control and consistency (my students need it too) I like to do things like that once a week. The rest of the week is playing games, vocabulary, grammar, and spelling worksheets. These are interactive worksheets that they do with their partner.

Monday: Spelling
Tuesday: Vocabulary/Reading skill
Wednesday: Grammar skill
Thursday: Reading skill or Grammar skill
Friday: Fun day games: Boggle, BAM, Bingo, or wikki sticks

The picture shows two signs one just lets us know that this is the Word Work tray and the other tells the students what their assignment is for the day. With the sign laminated I can use a dry erase marker to change from day to day.

Work on Writing

I don't have anything really fancy for Work on Writing but I do have each student a notebook and each morning I have a prompt on the board that I get from http://www.superteacherworksheets.com/journal-prompts.html.  I put the prompt on the board when they come in and they start writing as soon as they are unpacked.  The point is to write and writing they do!! Mistakes are sometime huge but when I read them I correct and then discuss why they need to add a period at the end of a sentence or add a capitall letter to the first word in a sentence. What the students like the most is that they can write and not be graded. Knowing this they will work harder and write more. :)

Read to Partner

After my students were able to Read to Self  for 20 min then I introduced Read to Partner. This is a tricky one because if it were up to the students they will want to pick their best friend (which could get them in trouble). I had to spend alot of time discussing how to pick a partner. It turns our my class can't handle picking their partner so I choose and it's the same pairs everyday. Next year if I have a class that can handle it I would much rather them picking their partner. I use leveled readers and their weekly reading story to partner read.

The pair will pick up their Read to Partner stick and go find a quiet place away from others. They will silently play rock, paper, scissor to see who goes first. Then the person reading will hold the book and read as much as they feel comfortable and when they are does the other person who will be holding the stick will say, "I heard you read.....". Then they will switch and continue to rotate until the book or story is read.

In front of my Read to Partner sticks I have three buckets which are leveled so the pairs know which book is theirs to read. The sign you see tells them to read their reading story. On Monday and Tuesday they partner read the leveled readers and on Wednesday and Thursday they partner read their reading story. The sign is laminated so I can use a dry erase marker to let them know what they are to be reading. Also, on the sign there is a small card that has the directions for Read to Partner.

Read to Self

The most important theme of Daily 5 is to get your students reading!!! The first part of Daily 5 is to Read to Self. If your students can not independently read then Daily 5 will not be affective. The good news is you can teach your students to read. In the book it says to start at around 3 min and work your way up to 15-20 min. My class picked up very fast and we were reading on our own in about 3 weeks, other classes make take longer. I would time the students reading and as soon as they would get restless and talking I would ring my bell and they would come back to the rug. They learned fast to try to beat their past time.

These bags you see in the picture are the wonderful "book bags". Now the bags I have are $0.99 a piece :) from the One Bag at a Time website.  http://www.onebagatatime.com/shop/bags/nwpp-standard-shopping-bag-5.html .  I used the big zip lock bags for a while but they would break and make so much noise that it would distract the other readers. The bags are hanging on hooks on the back of my reading shelf.

The goal for the "book bags" is for the students to go shopping for a "good fit book" to put in their bags but to start out I picked the books. Now they go shopping every Friday for their books.